ServiceNow introduces cloud orchestration app to Knowledge13

ITProPortal has less than 24 hours left in Las Vegas, experiencing as much of ServiceNow's Knowledge13 conference as possible. Today, the company introduced ServiceNow Cloud Provisioning, its third new product in three technology-packed days.

It is an organisational application, which is designed to make the cloud management lifecycle fully automated and standardised.

ServiceNow also claims that the Cloud Provisioning tool will enable cloud environments based on either Amazon EC2 (public) or VMware (private) to be formed and entered into service in a matter of minutes, rather than weeks or even months. No special training is needed to run the application to its full potential, and ServiceNow Cloud Provisioning should function efficiently, without the need for manual intervention.

ServiceNow hopes the product will change the face of cloud administration, turning it from a daily IT management task to an independent business self-service system.

"While cloud computing brings efficiency and agility to the enterprise, companies are using old means of management, resulting in tremendous waste of resources and slow responsiveness to cloud provisioning needs," said Matt Schvimmer, VP of product management at ServiceNow. "With ServiceNow Cloud Provisioning, IT can now effectively manage heterogeneous cloud environments through zero-touch automation, thus accelerating business transformation."

The new software, according to ServiceNow, will also eliminate the problem of virtual machine sprawl, which can come about as a consequence of insufficient IT management. Users can also view a united list of cloud operations through the specialised portal and distinguish and implement appropriate change policies using Change Management.

"IT organisations that implement extensive automation and orchestration technologies can significantly improve operational productivity and end-to-end service levels," said Mary Johnson Turner, research VP at Enterprise Systems Management Software, IDC. "A consistent user interface that is tightly integrated with the cloud provisioning workflow automation engine is a critical enabler in helping IT to improve business performance across the enterprise."